Emanuel Ax in conversation with Matthew Hunter (16 min.)

Since 1988, the American pianist of Polish origin Emanuel Ax has appeared as a guest with the Berliner Philharmoniker, where he was Pianist in Residence in the 2005/2006 season. In many of their concerts together, he impressed audiences with his sensitive yet unsentimental Mozart playing. In October 2014 under the baton of Andris Nelsons, in addition to Mozart’s Piano Concerto in E flat major K. 449, he also performed an early work by Richard Strauss, his Burleske, a work avoided by many pianists, not least because of its extreme technical demands. On the occasion of this concert, Emanuel Ax in an interview with the Philharmoniker’s violist Matthew Hunter talks about his Facebook profile and the new media, about his roots in the Russian pianist school, his years as an accompanist in the violin class of the legendary teacher Dorothy DeLay in New York, about what really matters in piano technique, and his fascination with Richard Strauss’s Burleske.